I must interrupt my blog-sabbatical to suggest that you read this highly textured piece in The New Yorker about the problems with assimilation & immigration in The Netherlands by Ian Buruma.
The only point I would make explicit is this: the magnitude of the proximate negative individual consequences of the social prominence of non-assimilative groups is directly proportional to the distance of said individual from that group.1 That is, the confrontation between white Dutch society and non-white Muslim Dutch of Moroccan origin community casts a mild pall on the relations between whites and non-whites as a whole in Dutch society, but it causes greater problems for a Turkish individual,who stands closer in identification to Moroccans (“Middle Eastern” and Muslim in origin) than a black or Indian Surinamese, while non-group identified Moroccans must confront hostility from both sides. Buruma’s article points out clearly that there is a difference of degree in terms of the social problems associated with various immigrant groups in The Netherlands. He also points out, importantly I think, that the Moroccans of Dutch origin are often of rural Berber origins, that is, they are sampled from the less developed elements of their nation of origin.
The take home point is that there are many strategies that any given individual can employ to promote their own “interest” contextualized by their “values.” There are many paths of social and individual development that might ensue based on a given sequence of decisions (ie; whether to withdraw back into your community after negative racist encounters or continue to plod on and engage with a somewhat hostile world), Buruma’s piece doesn’t even begin to capture the complexity, but it is a useful antidote for the more glib and trite dichotomies (ie; Islam~Peace or Islam~War) that pass themselves off as common wisdom these days….
1 – Consider the conundrum of the Sikh community in the United States post 9-11. In Bangladesh people often asked my family if they faced anger or discrimination after 9-11 because of their Muslim identification, but they said they experienced little if any of this, rather, they noted with sadness that Sikhs were the object of racism and discrimination. This is an extreme case, but the point is that any tensions between Muslims & American society (many of whom are South Asian or generically brown in the American mind) have salient implications for non-Muslim South Asians, and more broadly, immigrants.
Posted by razib at 03:39 PM